Spring 2018 Week 7

Introduction

We’re now into the second half of the season and the new shows are starting to wear on me a bit. Not only have many of the new shows from this season slowed down, but even some of the anime in their second cour are starting to lose my interest.

Hopefully each of these six series (at least those that are one cour) can finish strong over the next few weeks.

Despite how I just mentioned that I’m starting to get bored with the anime this season, I’ve decided to increase the rating for Love To-LIE-Angle from a 4 to a 5/10. I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s entertaining enough for five-minute episodes even if it’s pointless.

Sure, the show is mainly just yuri fan service, but every now and then you’ll get a gem out of it like when Konomi smacked a wild boar with a tin full of water (see image below). It’s action shots like this that more comedy anime need to incorporate.

Other than that scene, I honestly don’t remember what happened in the episode so either it was more pointless than usual, or the boar scene simply out-shined everything else.

Comic Girls was simply alright this week and is remaining at a 6/10. The more I think about it, the more Comic Girls seems just like a full length version of Love To-LIE-Angle, but that’s also not necessarily a bad thing.

Anyway, this week’s episode followed Kaos as she decided to get glasses, partially because her eyesight is failing and partially because she wants to look more mature. Unfortunately for her, she’s still going to look like an elementary school student no matter what she does.

I thought the best gag of the episode came at the end when Kaos attempts drawing with her new glasses for the first time. Now that she can see well, she realizes how bad her drawings really are and so she locks her glasses away to hide from her shame.

Last week a new opponent who has the persona of a lion was set up as the third of four megalo boxers to be featured in the Megalonia competition. However, as I predicted, this week’s episode did not feature a fight between him and Gearless Joe.

What I didn’t predict though, was that another fight would take place between Joe’s fight against Aragaki and this new lion fighter whose name I don’t remember. Apparently Mikio Shirato, brother of Yukiko Shirato who’s hosting Megalonia, is a megalo boxer himself.

Mikio knows that although he’s high enough in the rankings to enter Megalonia, Joe has a high chance of being picked instead simply due to his growing popularity. To ensure he’s picked, Mikio challenges Joe to a match for the final position in the championship.

Unfortunately we don’t get the fight between these two this episode, but there was a twist at the end which casts doubt on if Joe will make it into Megalonia at all. Despite this, he’s the protagonist so I still think he’ll make it there and win the whole thing.

This week I dropped Hinamatsuri from an 8 to a 7/10. It’s not that this week’s episode was bad, because it wasn’t, but over the past few weeks I’ve just started to get tired of these series as I mentioned earlier. Basically, the novelty has worn off.

That said, this week’s episode included three different plot lines. First we saw Anzu learning how to work in the restaurant she now lives in, then we saw Hina run for student council president, and finally we saw Nitta go on a date with Utako.

While Anzu’s story was a success, Hina didn’t win the race for student council president because first-year students aren’t allowed to run for that position to begin with. She did, however, get elected treasurer, but since she wanted to be president she never shows up.

While all this was going on, Nitta was trying to get a date with Utako who ended up turning him down because she didn’t want to get between his relationship with his “daughter,” Hina. On the other hand, Hina wants Nitta to date Utako because she wants a mom.

I think in the end of the series Nitta and Utako will end up being together simply due to the scene of them and Hina in the OP for the anime.

My Hero Academia season 3, or Macademia as I’ll be referring to it for the foreseeable future, wasn’t the exciting episode I was hoping for. I was expecting to see a full fight involving “best girl” Himiko Toga, but instead we largely saw what happened last week, but from different perspectives.

The only real new information we got was that Tokoyami was rescued by his classmates, but Bakugo was not. In the end, Bakugo is shown in the bar used as the villain’s hideout with the rest of the League of Villains.

While nothing really happened this week, and I would like to say that there surely must be a good amount of action next week involving the rescue of Bakugo, that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Based on the next episode preview, it looks like we’ll see the setup for the rescue with the actual rescue coming the following week. However, since there appear to be two different rescue operations being planned (by the students and pro heroes) I expect that battle to be a good one.

Finally, we have Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online. This was another setup episode, like we had in Macademia, but with a lot more new information given to us. Karen (LLENN) meets her Squad Jam partner M in real life, much to her surprise.

During this interaction we learn that there’s going to be a second Squad Jam and Pito is going to be participating this time (I think she’s the sponsor). We also learn that if Pito is defeated by anyone other than LLENN, she’s going to kill M and then herself in real life.

While this seems that this is a bit too crazy for anyone to actually do, it turns out that Pito is obsessed with the death game that went on in Sword Art Online and so is trying to recreate her own version of it in some way. M is also set up to be on Pito’s team during Squad Jam 2.

However, this leaves LLENN without a teammate for the next Squad Jam and so she contacts one of her friends who we met earlier in the series, but whose name I forget, to be her partner. I’m assuming this is going to be the grenade launcher girl we see in the OP.

I still have Gun Gale Online rated at a 5/10 after I lowered it last week, but maybe with the addition of grenade launcher girl the series will get better again.